


alternating current

by losebetter



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: ...kind of, Advisor!Gladio & Shield!Ignis, Character Study, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Sparring, reverse!au - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 11:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12275292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losebetter/pseuds/losebetter
Summary: Gladio isn’t rude - he sips from his own cup, and feels his eyebrows lift. “Not bad,” he offers. It’s something herbal and crisp, cardamom maybe.“Mmm. I prefer coffee, actually,” Ignis replies, one corner of his mouth twitching. “But duty calls, and I do require sleep at some point.” He turns his gaze on Gladio and all at once he feels pinned, despite being probably twice Scientia’s weight, easy. “If you’ll excuse my forthrightness, I’m surprised to see you here. The Crownsguard doesn’t tend to pay me any mind.”





	alternating current

**Author's Note:**

> WELL THIS SURE HAPPENED. i have no explanation. i was sitting around, ten other projects to do, and thinking "what if gladio was noct's advisor and ignis was his shield?" and then all of a sudden... this. it's not been betaed and was more of an experiment than anything, but i hope y'all enjoy it anyway? (❁°͈▵°͈)ノ
> 
> with love to q and pika for convincing me that this wasn't the dumbest idea ever. <3
> 
> (i'm pecking at minor edits to this, because a healthy portion of it was written in a daze of painkillers. i apologize in advance.)

“Ah, Gladiolus,” Ignis greets, all mild poise as if having the future king’s advisor in his quarters in the middle of the night is just another Wednesday for him. “Come in.”

He leaves the door to his apartment open, and Gladio can’t help but snoop, taking his time closing it to look around. If he’d been hoping to glean any kind of secret intel from the Shield’s living space, it’s a lost cause: Ignis’ walls are almost entirely bare. He has a calendar, and some kind of organizational board beside the kitchen nook - it looks suspiciously like the one in Noctis’ apartment, in fact, though this one is clearly more well-loved.

“Can I get you anything?” he asks politely, puttering around in the kitchen and letting Gladio look at whatever he wishes. “I’ve a pot of tea, or I can put coffee on.”

“Tea’s good.”

Ignis mumbles something, and Gladio can hear him fussing around in the cupboards for another mug. “Milk? Honey?”

It all feels almost despicably domestic - if he’s trying to make Gladio uncomfortable, he’s doing a great job. He feels like he’s still at work. “Nah, it’s fine how it is.” He runs a hand through his hair, shaking it out. “Thanks.” He wonders if he should sit, but the only available surface is a futon against the wall, and something feels presumptuous about sitting there.

He leans back against a chest of drawers just in time for Ignis to reappear, holding out a mug for Gladio to take, and taking a tender sip of his own once he does.

Gladio isn’t rude - he sips from his own cup, and feels his eyebrows lift. “Not bad,” he offers. It’s something herbal and crisp, cardamom maybe.

“Mmm. I prefer coffee, actually,” Ignis replies, one corner of his mouth twitching. “But duty calls, and I do require sleep at some point.” He turns his gaze on Gladio and all at once he feels pinned, despite being probably twice Scientia’s weight, easy. “If you’ll excuse my forthrightness, I’m surprised to see you here. The Crownsguard doesn’t tend to pay me any mind.”

It’s a loaded statement, for sure, but Gladio can see right where it fits. He takes another sip of the tea (it really is good, though part of his brain is kicking him for not checking whether it was messed with, first - _gods, you have one job_ ) and mulls it over - he has the other side of the picture, knows what the other guys have to say about Ignis, but he hadn’t been sure how much of it had gotten back to him.

“No?” he prompts. Ignis frowns.

“No… they mostly think they could do my job better than I could.” His frown turns toothy, a brief slip. “Ulric thinks I’m a skank who’s sleeping with the prince.” Gladio nearly chokes, but Ignis doesn’t look bothered, his expression smoothing over. “I imagined you to be somewhere in the middle.”

“Um,” Gladio tries, uncertain when he became the party with less information in this exchange. “I don’t think you’re sleeping with Noct,” he promises, but his brow furrows. His instincts flare up and he only doesn’t scowl into his mug because he’s been practicing diplomatic indifference since he was seven years old. “Might be a breach of protocol if you were,” he adds. Okay, so he’s bluffing. He’ll look it up later.

“A relief, then, that I have no such intentions,” Ignis muses over the lip of his mug, not calling him on it one way or the other. His glasses have fogged up with the hot drink, and he’s allowed them to slide down the bridge of his nose, peering over the rims at Gladio.

“Look,” Gladio says, at the same time Ignis says, “so…” They both shut their mouths at the same time. Ignis gestures for him to continue before Gladio can.

He clears his throat. “Ignis - I know the guard’s on your back, so let me help you shake ‘em off. Come training with me.”

“With you?”

“Yup. You and me. A little spar out on the lawn, man to man, show the guys how it’s done. How ‘bout it?”

“The lawn,” Ignis repeats incredulously - then his expression clouds, like a bulb flickering out. “Ah.”

Gladio has no idea what happened. He likes to think he’s decent at reading people, but Ignis on a normal day is nearly impossible - if he’s actively trying to shut Gladio out, he might as well be trying to tell what’s going on behind the eyes of the royal godsdamned bust.

“Ignis?”

“I admit, I didn’t know your angle at first,” Ignis murmurs, lowering his mug slightly. His knuckles are bent from it in harsh angles, his fingertips tense and pale. “But I had assumed we were in agreement that schoolyard taunting was beneath us both. _Really_ , Gladiolus.”

Gladio blinks. “Easy,” he says - because honestly, Ignis looks icy now, like he might go for his throat. “Wait, wait wait. Gonna need to walk me through that one, man. What - “ he keeps his eyes on Scientia’s face, alert for any change. “You think I’m gonna bring you out there and - take your lunch money, or somethin’? Or… or, yeah. That’s exactly what you think I’m gonna do,” he finishes. “Shit, Iggy - _Ignis_ ,” he corrects immediately, the nickname burning his tongue. That one wasn’t ever supposed to get back to Ignis’ ears, either.

If Ignis noticed the slip, he’s remarkably calm about it - Gladio’s pretty sure he’s just blowing smoke, though, trim shoulders still up by his ears as he goes for a sip from his mug.

“That wasn’t,” Gladio hedges, feeling like an awkward asshole and definitely like someone in a private place he shouldn’t be in, “ah, hell.”

“I thought you would try,” Ignis finally answers, tone more level, almost obliging - Gladio’d have to be pretty thick in the head to miss the unspoken challenge. He meets Gladio’s eyes. “So you want to see for yourself whether the king made a mistake?”

Astrals, the guy’s high-strung - even moreso than Gladio’d heard from Noct. If he were anyone else, he might cut his losses and back out, but Gladio is seized with a sudden desire to see what that sort of precision can do for a weapon in his hands, and he didn’t make it this far by avoiding risks.

He’s pretty sure the king didn’t make a mistake.

“Yup,” he says, anyway - when Ignis tilts his head, calculating, Gladio widens his eyes over his tea, finishing it off with his eyebrows waggling. He lowers the mug and turns up the wattage on his smirk, standing up straight. “I wanna see what you got.” 

Something of his charm must be working, because when he holds out the empty mug by its rim, Ignis puts one hand out to take it from him, lips pursed.

“Tomorrow, bright and early,” Gladio says, heading backwards toward the door with a lazy salute that turns into a peace sign at his chest halfway through. “And bring your A game.”

* * *

Gladio’s up before dawn the next day, slid into the chair in front of his webcam by six. He does a perfunctory check-in with His Majesty, looking put together from the waist up despite the pajama bottoms and saberclaw slippers still on under the desk, and the cup noodles he’s having for breakfast hidden neatly behind his computer. When he takes a sip from the tea he’d brewed that morning, he’s surprised to taste his usual green, the encounter in Ignis’ apartment still on his mind.

He’s at the Citadel, mostly dressed, within the half-hour and decides to let Noct sleep, dipping into the gym for his favored practice sword and making his way to the lawn.

Ignis is already there when he arrives - as are a smattering of the guard, all giving him a wide berth. Yeesh.

If this bothers Ignis, though, he makes no indication. He only inclines his head toward Gladio, looking keen as ever.

“Ready to get this show on the road?” Gladio asks, slinging his sword up over his shoulders. “I got a princess to wrangle in about an hour, but that should be plenty of time.”

“Quite,” Ignis agrees, mouth turning up so quickly that Gladio wonders if it was just a passing shadow. “Ready when you are.”

They make their way to a clear patch of grass, still wet with dew and staining Gladio’s pant legs. When he turns, he sees that Ignis has armed himself: instead of the blades he’d expected, Ignis is carrying a wooden staff in one hand - a polearm Gladio recognizes as standard.

Attached to his other hand is what appears to be a buckler, barely bigger than Gladio’s fist. It’s silver and glints in the light, but it looks so out of place that Gladio can’t help himself; he shifts his broadsword, as if weighing it. It’s blunt, intended for spars, but it still feels like it’d be enough to smash the little shield and hack Ignis’ forearm off with it.

He swallows, suddenly nervous that this will look like some bully’s bloodbath after all. “You sure about this, Scientia?” he calls. “Can always call it off.”

Ignis stands a little straighter, though he hasn’t gone stiff. Absently, Gladio notes that his form looks pretty good. He shouldn’t be surprised, but he can’t help himself - Ignis has always struck him as someone too dainty to do any real damage.

“Nonsense,” he calls back, to the tittering of the peanut gallery closer to Gladio. His tone is cool, unruffled. “Let’s have it, lest you miss your appointment with the prince.”

They get into position and share a curt bow - and of all the ways Gladio had imagined this bout starting, none of them had been with Ignis immediately closing in on him, crouched just slightly, polearm in both hands swept up next to his cheek, threaded right through his arms. It takes him about ten seconds.

Gladio flinches, instinctive, eyebrows up to his hairline, but Ignis seems nonplussed.

“I’ll give you another chance,” he says lowly. “But in the future, it would be wise not to engage in a fight until you’re prepared.” Fucking ouch. “To say nothing of underestimating your opponent.”

Gladio swallows, feeling put on the spot - the chatter has ceased behind him, and he figures there are probably some jaws on the ground. It’s rare for any of them to see the prince’s Shield at work, given that he prefers to train during the night, but Gladio has a sinking feeling (mixed with something like pride, actually, though he thinks Ignis might skewer him if he says as much) that any rumors about him slacking off were just that.

Ignis withdraws the arm and slips into a tidy back handspring, winding it back around himself and into a more neutral grip once he lands. It’s fucking _showy_ is what it is, and Gladio adjusts his grip on his sword, not taking his eyes off him.

He’s realized two things.

One, that the buckler is actually attached to some kind of mechanism on Ignis’ arm, shunting it into a bracer to free up his hands when he doesn’t need it. It looks like a handy piece, and reminds him of the king’s leg brace, all delicate tech, Lucian pride in the shape and form of it.

Two, distantly: that he is not going to win this fight.

Gladio’s ready for him this time, even tries to catch him off-guard, but Ignis knows how to parry him as if they’d been training together all this time, knows exactly where to put that tiny metal shield to overbalance Gladio’s swings.

Ignis might not have a lot of weight to throw around, but what he does have clearly does what he tells it to. It’s obvious he hasn’t been trained for brute force, but for a meticulous grace that surprises Gladio with how equally deadly it seems. He knows how to slough off Gladio’s blows, when to crouch to cover his feet, and which attacks he’ll need to block with his staff and both hands; Gladio is already breathing hard, and he hasn’t landed a single hit on him.

He’s countered every one of Gladio’s attempts to attack him, and he hasn’t given an inch.

To his credit, Ignis’ breaths are hoarse too, the corded muscle of his shoulders twitching. The collar of his shirt is starting to go damp with sweat.

“As the prince’s Shield, I will always have more than my own life on the line,” he says evenly. All at once, Gladio’s eyes widen. He realizes Ignis hasn’t dodged away from the line of fire even once, as if protecting something behind him. “You should take care, fighting an enemy with something more to lose.”

“You tryin’a give me advice?”

Ignis’ lips twitch. “It seemed that you needed it.”

Gladio feints back, just enough, and thinks, _oh_.

Ignis is talking big enough that he can tell some of the guys are starting to whisper again. Maybe they’re taking bets, at this point, or maybe they already did - but Gladio’s realization makes him feel like he just changed the game behind the dealer’s back.

His first instinct, when it had hit him that Ignis could somehow send him reeling no matter what he tried, to the point that he could protect some imagined charge at his back, was that the guy was a fucking steel trap, impenetrable from any side.

His next instinct is the one he decides to follow - the one that tells him neatly that if Ignis is splitting his attention, he’s leaving himself open _some_ where. 

And now he knows where.

Feeling more at ease with a plan, Gladio spits a short distance away, then grins, playing at jovial.

“Uh huh,” he says. “Well, save it. We ain’t finished here yet.”

He aims his next strike at Ignis low, toward his hip, and gets a sharp counter against the staff for his trouble - but he’s expecting it, and bounces back to chain an overhead swing that forces Ignis to bend up to catch it with the staff -

\- and when he does, Gladio lets himself grin, shifts his weight, and kicks his foot against the side of Ignis’ heeled boot, just enough to push it in the grass.

It’s a tease, just a half-second touch in what’s become a spectacle as more of the guard have arrived for morning drills, but Ignis is too smart to not know what it means, and Gladio sees his light eyes go very wide.

Ignis grunts with the effort of shoving him off and slams his staff into the ground, just missing Gladio’s toe, and Gladio gives him that much, hopping back out of his reach to let him recover. He sets his sword on his shoulder, meeting Ignis’ glare with confidence.

Gladio knows he isn’t going to win this round - but he’s found a hole in the Shield’s acute defenses, and they both know it. It means one way or the other, this won’t be the end of it.

_We ain’t finished here_ , Gladio thinks to himself, again. It occurs to him to wonder if they ever will be, though this is hardly the time.

As if he can sense blood in the water, Ignis has stopped taunting him and started actually fighting back, instead of just letting Gladio wear himself out. They get into a decent rapport like that, a number of moves and then a breaking apart, a pattern forming.

Gladio is aware, logistically as well as from experience now, that Ignis is the better fighter. He should be - he’s probably been groomed for moments just like these, for being too nimble and particular to allow any potential threat the luxury of repeat performances, the way Gladio is getting now. 

It’s a hell of a party trick, and - Gladio huffs as Ignis’ polearm catches him in the side - he definitely has the tack to back it up. But there are those occasions when Gladio senses that weak point, the strain of the eyes the guy apparently has at the back of his head, and he can’t let this end without nailing one, just holding out for the right moment.

He gets it all at once:

Ignis is pushing an advantage, looking focused and a hell of a lot like he wants to finish this up. He twirls the arm in his hands; to his side, a fake out to Gladio’s left, then a horizontal strike that he barely blocks in time. But he does, and he can see the way it sets Ignis’ arm - the one with the buckler mechanism attached - off-kilter, and Gladio shoves brutally past it before he can correct.

Of course, the little shield is up, Ignis waiting for Gladio to go for his open side -

\- which is how they end up at a standstill, Ignis waiting to counter a strike that doesn’t come, the outside of Gladio’s arm pressed up next to him and around the buckler, just under his ribs.

Behind his back, the practice sword has hacked a divot into the fresh sod, wet grass adhering to the wooden blade.

“Left him open,” Gladio breathes.

Ignis looks like he’s been struck after all. Gladio isn’t sure he’s breathing.

He expects some flippant response, or perhaps a genuinely angry one, but he gets neither - at least, not verbally.

Ignis’ next movements are swift and decisive; a twist away from Gladio’s arm to grab it under his own, then a harsh rap of the metal shield against the back of Gladio's elbow that makes him howl and lose his grip on his sword, his fingers throbbing, frozen. He stumbles back automatically, away from where he’d left his blade in the ground, and Ignis gets him to trip over his staff with a couple of quick swings until he’s flat on his back, feeling the cool grass against his sweat-drenched tank top.

The polearm, he’d expected either at his throat (as is traditional) or between his legs (the cheap shot) - Ignis goes for neither, holding its blunt end at the crux of Gladio’s nose, instead. Gladio goes crosseyed trying to focus on it - he could break his nose if he wanted to, training weapon or no.

He follows the arm up to Ignis’ face, where he looks disheveled but quietly pleased.

_Train with me again_ , Gladio reads, despite the almost unfriendly set to his features. He doesn’t think he’s imagining it - it’d be irresponsible of them both if he was.

Despite his surety, Ignis doesn’t say anything out loud. He only pins Gladio there for a moment, then withdraws his weapon. He lifts his boot from Gladio’s stomach, which is the only way Gladio knows it had been there at all, the sudden improvement in his ability to breathe without a heel digging into the vulnerable skin under his navel. 

“Good show,” he reports, adjusting his glasses, though he doesn’t offer Gladio a hand up. If it were anyone else, it’d be unsporting as hell, but Gladio’s not really feeling the ire of a conceited winner off him. He gets up on his own.

“Yeah,” he agrees, then adds, “think you showed them a thing or two," inclining his head toward the other guys where they’ve mostly broken off into other groups, not content to hang around.

Ignis hums. “Perhaps.” He’s fucking around with the tech on his arm, probably checking to make sure they didn’t break it - or maybe just avoiding Gladio’s eye, he can’t tell for sure.

He claps Ignis on the back, clearly harder than he’d been expecting - for all of his grace before, he nearly goes over now.

“Oh, sorry,” Gladio says. “But hey - we gonna do this again sometime?”

Ignis recovers from the stagger quickly enough, his expression perfectly neutral.

“Mm. You know where I’ll be.”

“Is that a yes?”

Ignis huffs. “It’s a, _we have jobs to attend to_.”

Fair enough - he gives him a winning smile, anyway, helplessly amused that Ignis is being this stubborn, despite his win. He’s clearly still sour that Gladio had figured out his little trick, which just buoys Gladio’s mood even more. 

“Great. Good talk, Ignis.”

“Indeed. Shoo.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [tumblr](http://losebetter.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/losebetter) if you want to say hello! i also have a [private FFXV twitter](https://twitter.com/bbbbirds) for kink meme things/other nonsense, if that's to your tastes. thank you for reading!


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